<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>something more alive than silence by foibles_fables</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25187134">something more alive than silence</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/pseuds/foibles_fables'>foibles_fables</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Legend of the Seeker (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>During Canon, Episode: s02e20 Eternity, Episode: s02e21 Unbroken, F/F, Mild Sexual Content, Missing Scene</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:08:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,335</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25187134</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/foibles_fables/pseuds/foibles_fables</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There are ghosts in Cara's eyes, and Dahlia can see them. One of them is more haunting than the others. [2x20-2x21 canon-compliant]</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dahlia/Cara Mason, Kahlan Amnell/Cara Mason (implied)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>something more alive than silence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>HEY FOLKS, in a completely unsurprising turn of events, I manged to play myself right into a Cara/Dahlia love spiral obsession. So here, have this old little thing I wrote for LJ/Legendland (prompt: "ghosts") a looooong time ago. On that note, I wanna give about 200 thanks to muses_mistress, who went her way through ten years of the comm to retrieve this for me! I owe her an incredible amount. Go check out <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesmistress">her AO3 dash</a> if you are so inclined - I was lovin' on some of her Seeker and Fringe writings today!</p><p>I also remember this being wholly inspired by Vienna Teng's "Between," which has now joined the ranks in wrecking my Spotify stats.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the final breaking, it does not take long for Cara to transcend the decrepit, embarrassing shell of herself which she had become.</p><p>She settles back into herself with chilling ease. Every bit the Mord-Sith she was, every bit the Mord-Sith she should be.</p><p>Dahlia watches it all, and not from a distance. There should never have been distance between them. There should never be anything between them save for urgent desire and shared sweat and strangled gasps and groans of pleasure.</p><p>(There never should be anything between them, and yet.)</p><p>Dahlia watches all the ways of transformation, of the calling back.</p><p>Cara dresses her full Mord-Sith garments - not merely leathers, or the wretched bastardization of them Dahlia had found her in. No, <em>proper</em> leathers and armor, as it should well be. The neck guard, rigid and tight, covers her to the chin, which she almost always holds upright to display power that, here, is never seen as arrogance. Straps and buckles crisscross over her chest, meticulously fastened, covering her strong core, a comforting vice grip on her body. She begins wearing a braid again, though her hair is still just a bit short for its totality. Its tail reaches the first jutting bone of her spine. Dahlia helps to pin up the stubborn wisps of blonde that escape at the nape of her neck, refusing to be secured with the rest.</p><p>Because that’s what she’s for. That’s who she is for Cara - what they were for each other, <em>are</em> for each other. Keeping the other in line. No weakness to show.</p><p>(Then why do they show?)</p><p>Cara carries herself with confident, domineering, terrifying poise. She moves through everything with a strut and sway of her hips that brings Dahlia to the brink of distraction, telling of an attitude borne from known, proven, and resurrected strength. Her gloved fingers are the same, too, gripping the hilt of an Agiel until her knuckles have to be white beneath the leather; but it’s no matter, because she just gives the pain a hostile grin. It’s not enough. Nothing is ever enough. She makes her fist even tighter around the weapon.</p><p>Bare, inside, curling and uncurling, relentless, her fingers remember how to drive Dahlia absolutely mad.</p><p>(They remember, they <em>do</em>, but there’s something there.)</p><p>She gives orders in a strong, clear, clipped voice. With emphatic contempt, her mouth loudly denounces the man to whom she was recently so loyal.</p><p>Her voice becomes a seductive purr in Dahlia's ear. Her mouth leaves expert, tingling traces of heat on Dahlia's skin.</p><p>(Her body tastes the same, too. But a twitch of her eyes when Dahlia looks up for approval halfway through betrays.)</p><p>She is ruthless aggression, violence, and collection. She is menace. She is hard-earned blood and perspiration. She is the beauty of vehement determination. She is bared teeth, furrowed brow, and a fierce scowl entwined with a cool sneer and half-lidded gaze. She is forceful, demanding, irresistible.</p><p>She is what Dahlia knows, what Dahlia remembers. She is what reduced Dahlia to trembling ruins, night after night.</p><p>She is every bit the Mord-Sith she was. Every bit the Mord-Sith she should be. And every bit Dahlia’s.</p><p>(She is more than what she was. What is she?)</p><p>But when they're lying close together, skin pressed to skin, the scent of sweat and sex lingering in the air around them, the doubts creep in.</p><p>In a flash of vile fragility, Dahlia finds herself questioning if she's truly been broken again.</p><p>A phantom pain erupts in her forehead, a shadow of the sickening crash of skull against skull, as she holds Cara's gaze, heart and mind reeling back down from the latest climax. In the clarity, she sees something that anyone who does not know her well - does not know her as Dahlia does - would easily miss.</p><p>There are ghosts in her eyes.</p><p>They are altogether nothing and something. Shadows that have somehow remained, somehow broken through the veil, clouding her newly-reborn resolve. This low-flickering torchlight is where they glow brightest, this quiet is where they scream - these things that should have been eradicated, burned away to nothing. Dahlia is the one who sees them. Dahlia watches.</p><p>The shadows are many things. Dahlia knows her better than anyone, and they are extra. They are promises she's made and, now, shattered. They are the guilt for shattering them. They are remnants of words falling clumsily, fragments of unabashed tears. Gentleness. A soul surging forth. A new path, just barely cleared of the storm's debris. They are everything she learned, everything she felt while on the other side. They are diluted and hazy, tempered by agony, but they are also still undeniably there.</p><p>The ghosts in Cara’s eyes hint at a different shade of blue iris, a third one beyond their own - brighter, clearer, almost formed of crystal. It is a haunting color that Dahlia recognizes without need for a second scrutinizing glance. It shouts, much more than it hints, of dangerous influence, displaying power beyond pain, unfathomable and infuriating. It only makes Dahlia hate her more - not Cara, but the other. Hate her hands, hate her brilliant blue irises, hate that kind smile, hate the way she stroked Cara's arm (Dahlia had been watching), hate everything she is, absolutely hate whatever it was that she did to <em>her</em> Cara.</p><p>And then Cara is smirking at her, an uneven smile dripping with potent hunger, still left unsatisfied by all of their spirited efforts. She’s never satiated. She never was, might never be - an inferno that will never be snuffed out. Dahlia hopes it never will be - the way Cara looks at her, makes her scream, makes her come. All of what made (and makes) Cara <em>her</em> Cara. Hers. Always hers, hers alone. Dahlia should be spent, sore, bone-weary, but the look of her in the flickering torchlight sends a wanton throb through her whole body, into every small space, penetrating her just like Cara’s hands, Cara’s tongue, over and over and over. She shudders with the renewed longing for all of it, arching, pressing her bare, heat-flushed flesh into Cara’s, wondering what it might take to fuse their bodies entirely.</p><p>They have plenty of time to make up for.</p><p>Cara grips Dahlia’s hip, digging her fingertips into her there in a way that makes Dahlia gasp, and the smirk deepens.</p><p>Not for the first time that night, Cara growls, <em>you are mine</em>.</p><p>With barely a hairsbreadth between their lips, the smirk is nearly a snarl.</p><p>But somehow its intensity falters.</p><p>Behind the bold statement of claim, Dahlia hears, not for the first time that night, <em>I feel far away - please, keep me here, keep me from this weakness.</em></p><p>She also hears, <em>I miss them</em>.</p><p>And maybe,<em> I miss her</em>.</p><p>In that instant of double-hidden meaning, Cara’s piercing gaze fills her with disgusted dread. Revulsion at the thought of this deep, blasphemous connection neither screaming Agiel nor Dahlia’s eager touch has managed to erase.</p><p>The resulting thought brings fire to her throat: have those other hands, containing all of that monstrous, fearsome power, traced their way across Cara’s skin, bestowing treacherous touches, giving those ghosts a home?</p><p>Or did Cara (her Cara, that other Cara, <em>any </em>Cara) simply want them to?</p><p>It’s unclear which way is more dangerous to their plans.</p><p>(Or which feels harsher in Dahlia’s ribs.)</p><p>There are ghosts in Cara’s eyes and Dahlia can see them in the half-dark. They steal moments, steal composure, steal words. They’re threatening to steal her back. They're threatening to break through, every second crumbling away.</p><p>There are ghosts in Cara’s eyes and Dahlia can feel one in particular here, through the touching and the wanting and the thick air.</p><p>But Cara is not stopping. Their mouths meet, torrid, and then their tongues - and when Dahlia tastes her, she swears she can almost taste the other.</p><p>There are ghosts in Cara’s eyes, but they become easier to ignore as Cara's hand trails up the inside of her thigh.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>